Lost and Not Found
by EnglandBabe1997
Summary: Rose Tyler is lost and the Doctor doesn't even know where to start looking for her.


**Here's my first proper post for a while, sorry but life has been crazy (and will probably continue to be so) x I hope you all like this in the meantime because I've been meaning to write it for ages. Please read and review to tell me what you think xx :)**

_Blinded by the lights, this movie ain't over  
Take me by the hand, you feel a little colder  
I'm never gonna let you go  
I'm never gonna let you down  
The heart has taken control  
There's no one around_

* * *

He knows that even when she promises she'll never leave him she's not telling the truth. If only she could. He wants to hold her in his arms and promise her forever as well, but he can't and it will hurt too much when he has to let her go for the last time.

When he looks her in the eyes he knows she understands, even if she doesn't like it. She knows him well enough to know, but is too young to comprehend_ why_.

But he's nine hundred years old and he's seen hundreds of thousands of people die, some of them in his arms, some of them he cared about.

He's watched whole civilisations burn to the ground, his own _people_, and he knows that death won't be defeated by his blonde pink and yellow girl, no matter how hard she tries.

He doesn't like to tell her that, because there's nothing Rose hates more than being told something can't happen and she tries to change it so it can. Sometimes it goes horribly (case in point, when he took her to see her father's death, and perhaps that was a mistake in itself but he couldn't resist her when she was making those eyes at him and he knew how much he missed his own people).

Sometimes it turns out alright (when she'd taken in the Time Vortex and ended the Time War and he'd got to kiss her and lose the ears at the same time).

So he knows that he's not going to get forever with her. In the end she'll probably decide to take the slow path, with a husband and children and a home because what she wants a twenty one won't be the same when she's twenty five, thirty.

Maybe he'll lose her in a different way, too slow to save her from a Cyberman or rescue her from French robot droids.

She might even die in her bed on the TARDIS, in her sleep. He'll be holding her hand because that's what this body is made for and he doesn't know how he'd cope without her.

He knows that one day he'll have to

But he will make whatever time he has with her last.

* * *

He knows her hands better that he knows anything in the universe. He knows how they feel when they're in his.

And how it feels when they're not.

(She reaches out to him as she is dragged towards the Void. Her head remembers her screams but his hands feel his emptiness.)

* * *

It's not long, not nearly long enough, and he feels the shattering of three hearts when he stands on a beach in Norway, a world away but close enough to touch.

Just out of reach.

And isn't that just a metaphor for their whole relationship? Now that she's so far away he wishes that he hadn't held back, that he'd held her in his arms more often, that they'd kissed properly, just once, because it couldn't feel any worse than this. Instead of feeling the pain of a lost lover, he's has the weight of a thousand regrets of his shoulders, every missed chance.

He can feel every almost in the Vortex he sees.

But he can't see her now.

She's lost to him, hidden somewhere so deep that even he cannot find her. As he's told her, there are thousands of parallel worlds, stacked up against each other, and looking for one is like looking for a needle in a haystack, regardless of any damage done by the Cybermen.

But he won't give up.

He knows that travel between parallel worlds is impossible now that he is the last of the Time Lords, but they're good at beating the impossible.

(Only he can't do it without her, and there's a paradox in itself).

* * *

Months pass with no sign. He sifts through parallel after parallel, searches for a way to breach their walls, and there is nothing.

Instead he has Martha to distract him. He knows that she cares for him and he knows that he'll never share those feelings but he can't bring himself to tell her. If he tells her she might leave and he's barely hanging on by a thread as it is.

When Martha is around there is someone to pretend for, someone to test his facade.

When he is alone he gives into the madness, like he did with Donna and the Racnoss and the Thames.

He can't afford to lose it like that. There will be no hope of a solution, or even an answer to his question.

Has she moved on?

Or is she finding it as hard to live without him as he is?

He doesn't know which question he'd rather have answered.

Sometimes, when he sees a streak of blonde hair, he imagines it's her. When he closes his eyes he sees her tongue poking through her teeth, waving daringly at him.

His hand aches, like it misses it's partner and it's not even his _fighting hand_, so he can't blame it on regeneration gone wrong.

There is a pain deep in his chest, like his hearts are struggling to beat without hers there beside them. He doesn't know how humans cope with one.

When he really wants to torment himself he imagines that Martha is her sometimes and it breaks his heart when she opens her mouth and the wrong words come out, like 'what happened' instead of 'it's better with two'.

He's almost given up hope now, only he knows that she would never give up on him.

Both Tyler women would give him a slap right now and he'd give anything to have that happen.

Instead he dreams of blonde hair and pink jackets and pigtails and a hand in his where it belongs.

He will find her.

(Only he doesn't.)

* * *

(She finds _him_.)

* * *

_We're fading away  
Getting high off the ground  
We're fading away  
Lost and not found  
We're fading away  
Getting high off the ground  
we're fading away  
Lost and not found_


End file.
